Promise and Paradox
Observations from Clemson's AI Symposium — and a question that startled us both
Friday, April 17, 2026, at the Clemson University AI Symposium I saw how fast the change is coming. I was there as a listener, an observer, and as someone who is trying to contribute to a successful future for humans in an AI world.
The Excitement in the Air
Who could foresee that AI tools could help librarians weed out predatory journals? Or, that it could help food producers detect olive oil spoilage? Or, that physicists would be able to invent customized equations to explain and extrapolate about real-world data points? Everyone is exploring. Everyone is experimenting. Everyone is learning. It is an exciting time to be a researcher and a technologist.
The experts are reaching new heights, new possibilities, new applications, and much more quickly than ever before. It is extending human expertise.
Researchers that are using AI tools are clearly enchanted by them; their excitement is palpable as they shared their AI-assisted research gains.
Clemson has a unique focus that they call “human-centered AI”. This is where the issues of privacy, equity, bias, human needs, and social good enter the conversation. All of this is genuinely good. The researchers I met are not naive technologists racing toward disruption. Many of them are thoughtful people asking hard questions. Clemson’s human-centered AI focus is real, not just branding. And yet.
And Yet…
My work in education made me curious. How are teaching and learning evolving? Are professors and whole programs rethinking class dynamics and instructional design?
One professor said she now expects students to produce better work because they are using AI. “We have to adapt; not everyone wants to do that,” she noted.
She and others I spoke with who taught undergraduate students shared concerns about the erosion of students’ thinking and human capacities when AI is used poorly. She paused thoughtfully and replied, “This is something I think about all the time.”
Another professor— an AI researcher himself— told me he had genuinely extended his own capacities through AI use, but worries about the next generation,
“Students need to have built-up a capacity for thinking through hard work and struggle. I wonder about how we are going to preserve this.”
It is a paradox everyone is seeing: AI use is extending the frontier of knowledge, but the humans using the AI must bring hard-won human knowledge and capacities. I carried that paradox with me through the afternoon.
A Startling Question
One conversation continues to puzzle me. A professor asked me, “What if that is the future? What if humans will just lose their ability to think?”
We both startled at the thought.
Not sure what to say, I replied, “But, it wouldn’t happen to all of us. Some would still keep their ability to think. Then, there would be a few people with a lot of power. Being citizens in a free country should mean this is not what we want.”
I thought of my own kids and all the kids I have taught, of their smiles and their particular talents, and I knew: this is exactly the moment educators were made for. Not to deny the change, but to make sure the humans navigating it can flourish.